Sure Road? Nationalisms in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique

Eric Morier-Genoud, Ph.D. (2006) in Historical Sociology, State University of New York at Binghamton, is Lecturer in African History at Queen's University Belfast. He has published extensively on the history, religion and politics of Mozambique and South Africa.

Academics, students and all those interested in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau as well as students and instructors of Comparative Politics, Nationalism Studies, African Studies and the History of Portuguese-speaking Africa.

'This admirable book sets out to explain what nationalism and nationality has meant, and means today, for
the people of the former Portuguese colonies of Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique. It is a multi-authored
volume made up of papers delivered at a workshop in 2007 and, if the passage of five years and the different
perspectives and styles of eleven authors suggest a volume that is blurred in focus and partially out of date, this
is remedied by a masterly summary of the main themes by Gavin Williams and an introduction by the editor, Eric
Morier-Genoud, which restores the contemporary relevance of what has been written.........

Glimpses can be found in this book which show how this new ideology informs the African elites, how it is applied to policymaking, and how it defines the modern African nation–for example in Sumich’s observation that it is the conspicuous consumption of the power elite that now “expresses modernity” (p. 145) or in Birmingham’s observation that in Angola the “government dreams of Salazarian authoritarianism” (p. 221). However, this is an aspect of modern African nationalism only lightly touched on and one that needs further investigation–
perhaps in another collection of articles of the caliber of those published in this book'.

Malyn Newitt. H-Luso-Africa, H-Net Reviews. December, 2012.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ..................................................................................................vii
List of Contributors ................................................................................................. ix

Introduction. Thinking about Nationalisms & Nations in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique ...............xiii
Eric Morier-Genoud

I Anticolonialism & Nationalism: Deconstructing Synonymy, Investigating Historical Processes.
Notes on the Heterogeneity of Former African Colonial Portuguese Areas ........................................... 1
Michel Cahen

II Virtual Nations and Failed States: Making Sense of the Labyrinth ............................... 31
Philip J. Havik

III The Social Origins of Good and Bad Governance: Re-interpreting the 1968 Schism in Frelimo ............ 79
Georgi Derluguian

IV Writing a Nation or Writing a Culture? Frelimo and Nationalism During the Mozambican Liberation War ...103
Maria-Benedita Basto

V ‘An Imaginary Nation’. Nationalism, Ideology & the Mozambican National Elite ..............................127
Jason Sumich

VI UNITA and the Moral Economy of Exclusion in Angola, 1966–1977 ..................................................149
Didier Péclard

VII Angola’s Euro-African Nationalism: The United Angolan Front ..........................................................177
Fernando Tavares Pimenta

Changing Nationalisms: From War to Peace in Angola......................199
Justin Pearce

IX Is ‘Nationalism’ a Feature of Angola’s Cultural Identity? ...................217
David Birmingham

X Nationalisms, Nations and States: Concluding Reflections ...............231
Gavin Williams

Thematic Bibliography .........................................................................................251
Index.........................................................................................................................265